This sudden dove movement in the Republican party is so transparently political, it’s just cracking me up. They will take a position on the other side of anything associated with the president, I swear.
Ron Paul is the only one I believe is sincere.
I realized today that I may have been subconsciously avoiding watching the recent Frontline program on Wikileaks partly because I just didn’t want to be bummed out, wasn’t in the mood for a somber lecture with emotional audio prompts. Part of Frontline’s formula in explicating a big troubling issue is to dramatically recount all of the warning signs, and they use portentous music and a great grave voiceover announcer to heighten your concern about the topic. I find I don’t care for being manipulated like that anymore.
I started thinking differently about music in film and TV after hearing David Simon talk about why he prefers not to use music to make viewers feel a certain way. I’d never really thought about it before, but once I did I started to resent that type of persuasion—in newly made media anyway. I’m happy to grant exceptions to classics and allow myself to be emotionally led by the score in North By Northwest.
Later: My friend Hil points out that a program in Australia does this too, and that ominous lighting is a part of the effects package.
When Betaworks’ John Borthwick mentioned on the latest Gillmor Gang an analysis of the speculation surrounding Obama’s Bin Laden takeout announcement before the late night speech last Sunday, I had to look it up.
Check it out. There’s an underlying pitch in it for SocialFlow, a Betaworks company, but that is OK with me since it is a subtle pitch and it tells a tale you won’t hear elsewhere about social media reputation and how news takes shape online. It swirls around in little eddies that gather force and sometimes whoosh into the Main Stream.
Crazy how important Twitter has become in the news system, isn’t it?
It is becoming important for everything, not just news, though some voices are still absent. Funny, I will rail all day against curmudgeons who diss Twitter, but I’ll make a confession: I am glad I don’t see David Simon pimping each episode of his show in my stream. But maybe he would not use Twitter in that way; I’d like to think so.
What does my pleasure in Simon’s abstinence say about Twitter? Maybe that even people like me, a four-year user of the service, still find it vaguely trivial on the whole, increasingly promotional, self-centered. Yeah, it’s pretty much a mirror of the culture, and I suppose that is its value.
I’m enjoying HBO Go on the iPad.
As a huge fan of several HBO original series, which are eminently rewatchable, I like having access to the complete archives of favorite shows. Comcast’s OnDemand chooses for me—only letting me at selected episodes of selected series, while HBO Go allows me to dip into whichever season of The Wire I might be in the mood for.
I’ve so fully embraced the whole streaming thing that I rarely watch DVDs anymore, and recently switched to the streaming-only plan on Netflix. I’ll choose to watch something that can be seen instantly and without the physical encumbrance of a DVD. In fact, I’ve developed an active avoidance of DVDs. I can’t quite account for this odd behavior when it means I miss watching things I know I would like, but DVDs have become almost distasteful to me.
There’s one thing I miss: listening to audio commentary tracks, and the studios will have to do something about that. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to provide a commentary version of selected online videos, and while they’re at it, I’ll take an MP3 of the audio for my commute, please. (I might even pay, a little.) With well-loved movies and shows, I already know what’s on the screen. I can see it in my head. And so often the commentary doesn’t necessarily map to the action anyway.
In the early days of podcasting we saw some experimentation with amateur commentaries to videos, and I think Battlestar Gallactica even produced an official audio commentary podcast. But podcasting has settled into a rut just generally. There hasn’t been a lot of innovation in recent years. I blame iTunes’ dominance as a podcatcher, which meant iTunes became podcasting’s Billboard top 100 ranking and a main discovery method, which led to elevating the MSM podcasts, and possibly caused amateur efforts to ape old media style and production conventions.
With the rapid convergence of TV and the web there are opportunities to get creative—with show formats, not just technology. Alternate sound tracks wouldn’t just have to be recorded, either; they could be live. I’ve always thought, for example, that sports fans (guys mostly) might like to hear opinionated, partisan play-by-play sprinkled with obscenities. You know, the way guys talk when they’re watching games together. Especially when they are angry at a coach. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Also, there are a ton of podcasts about TV shows. They could mix it up a little, break from their predictable formats and offer commentary tracks, maybe just on occasion, like for season finales.
This cracks me up: the German press is having it out with the government’s press office because a spokesperson announced Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the U.S. on Twitter before it was announced to the press in a traditional news conference.
It’s a little hard to tell from the translation but some members of the media seem pretty pissy about it. The communications guy holding the press conference isn’t having any of it. I wonder if there’s video. I’d like to hear the tone and see the body language in that exchange.
I heard about it in a retweet of Jay Rosen by Dave Winer so I’m hoping they will talk about it on today’s Rebooting the News podcast.
Dave did a solo podcast a few weeks ago and it struck me that he mentioned a reformation of the news media. I thought at the time that it is something like the Protestant Reformation in the sense that both are partly about disintermediation. Providing the Bible and holding services in the language of the people was meant to put them in more direct contact with their religion by cutting out middleman priests and the Latin scripture and liturgy which was understood only by the educated classes.
It all came full circle in little neural connections this morning when seeing Dave’s twitter handle fired off a reminder of the podcast, and the circle was cemented by the irony that that other reformation began in Germany.
Have you been moved by U.S. Uncut‘s citizen’s actions? The group, like its creative British inspiration, vows there is an alternative to cutting worthwhile programs: Make corporate tax avoiders pay.
If you’re like me, you’re not really a group protester, and maybe you’d like to help me try this small solo way to object to Bank of America’s sweet tax deal.
Here’s the idea: Print out this sheet—on both sides of the paper for the best result, so if the slips flip over, the message still can be seen. Keep some with you; fold up a couple sheets and put them in your pocket. When you pass a Bank of America location, tear off a few squares, and drop them on the concrete in front of the bank. Hopefully they’ll blend right in with the pavement, because there’s nothing more delicious than a subtle annoyance. Maybe do it at night for very small thrill.
I always loved the Virlomi character in Orson Scott Card’s Ender series (well, until she got power mad, anyway). She’s an older battle school grad who appears in the later books, and starts a phenomenon called “The Great Wall of India,” starting with one little pile of stones that she claims she saw people in other villages making. Pile-making catches on and the little piles become giant obstructions, hindering the Chinese invasion of her country.
I think this idea must be a blend of Virlomi’s protest and a prank I played on my ex and my dad on major birthdays: thousands of even teenier paper slips that said “40” and “75” respectively, sprinkled absolutely everywhere and still being discovered years later.
I love these animations from RSA. I think we could never have an American Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.
Way too ... what? Brainy, I suppose. Enlightenment isn’t in vogue in the U.S. right now. Which I guess means we’re in the dark ages.
Let’s see how this works.
OK, not as simple as the simplest FB plugins; you need an application ID.
I’m just adding the embed code to a single post, not integrating it into my CMS. Which is kind of interesting. You could use it on an ad hoc basis.
Will it improve civility on sites that use it? I think so. Over on Techcrunch, commenters are complaining they don’t like the fact that they see their Facebook circle as their personal social space, and comments on technology articles have no place there. I see that, and also see that it’s not just real names that will promote civility; you don’t want people you know in real life to perceive you as the negative asshole you are when you blurt out drive-by comments on blogs.
